TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF RESEARCH ON WOMEN FARMERS IN AFRICA: LESSONS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH INSTITUTIONS; WITH AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY



Low, A. 1986. Agricultural Development in Southern
Africa: Farm Household Economics and the Food Crisis.
Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann.

The new household economics models, incorporating both
consumption and home and market production, are
adapted to the southern African context and used to explain
agricultural decisions. In these models, time, rather than
money, is the important constraint. Examples drawn from
Botswana, Lesotho, and Swaziland provide insights into
how households make decisions across different activities.
The author suggests that cash crops are grown only when
their value exceeds the retail price of food crops and the
potential wage employment of the better-qualified
household members. This framework explains why hybrid
maize in Swaziland was adopted only in areas where wage
opportunities were good, rather than in poorer areas.

Low, A. 1988. Farm household-economics and the design
and impact of biological research in Southern Africa.
Agriculture Administration and Extension 29: 23-34.

The use of a farm household perspective is important to
understanding African farmers’ behavior. Labor, not land, is
the most important constraint. This paper notes that there
does not have to be a shortage of land for urban migration
to occur. Rural outmigration may occur before the marginal
returns to labor on the farm begin to fall. Thus, migration
may have serious impacts on the labor available within the
farm household. The constraints faced by women farmers
are also noted. Not only are women often the ones
remaining on the farm, but they often have other time-
consuming responsibilities, including household tasks and
child rearing. These factors have implications for the
development of technology. Farm households are concerned
about the time use of household members and are
interested in minimizing the full cost of producing a unit of
output.

Mbata, J.N., and C.J. Amadi. 1993. The role of women in
traditional agriculture: A case study of women in food
crops production in Rivers State, Nigeria.
Discovery and
Innovation
5(1): 81-87.

This paper documents some of the roles of women in
agriculture in Rivers State, Nigeria. In addition, it uses farm
budgets and estimates production functions to recommend
changes in agricultural activities. The authors conclude that
women in the study area were inefficient in the use of all
the factors of production. The marginal value products of
hired labor, farm size, and seeds were higher than their
opportunity costs, while the marginal value product of
family labor was lower than its opportunity cost. The
reasons why this is so are briefly explored; they include the
traditional land tenure system, the low level of education,
inadequate capital, and weak extension links.

McHugh, D. 1993. The effect of storage loss rates on the
valuation of maize stored traditionally by farmers and
removed periodically for food, feed, or sale in
Cameroon.
Journal for Farming Systems Research-
Extension
3(2): 13-24.

While the taste and cooking characteristics of new, high-
yielding varieties of maize seem to satisfy the farmers of
Cameroon, farmers have been slow to adopt the new
varieties. The soft, denty grains associated with high yields
suffer greater qualitative and quantitative losses under
traditional storage conditions than do the small flinty local
varieties. Typical partial budget approaches that have been
used to evaluate the marginal rate of returns on new varieties
fail to take into account non-yield characteristics, price
variability throughout the year, and changes in the quality
and quantity of grain during storage. This paper develops a
model that accounts for these storage losses by assessing the
value of maize removed from the store at different times and
prevailing prices. It also evaluates the changing qualities of
both food and feed maize over the storage season. Maize
destined for human consumption is of higher quality (but of
the same variety) than feed maize for animals. Over the
course of the year, the quality standards for determining
which maize is food maize and which is feed maize diminish
as both the quality and quantity of stores decrease. An
example shows how yield gains from a higher-yielding
variety could be outweighed by the poor storage
characteristics of improved maize varieties. Breeders should
focus on producing hybrid varieties with good storage
characteristics.

McMillan, D. 1987. Monitoring the evolution of household
economic systems over time in farming systems research.
Development and Change 18(2): 295-314.

The Volta Valley Authority program is a planned settlement
scheme involving agricultural extension for settlers moving
into river basins. A case study approach was used to gather
information on the evolution of patterns of household and
intrahousehold production and consumption. These results
were compared with information collected using a farm
monitoring survey. The case study provided detailed
information not available in the survey, including
information about the settlers’ economic activities outside
the scope of the settlement scheme, both market and non-
market flows of goods among households, and the economic
activities of many members of the household.

McSweeney, B.G. Collection and analysis of data on rural
women’s time use.
Studies in Family Planning 10(11/
12): 379-83.

Based on a small sample from Burkina Faso, this study
examines detailed time use data for women. A comparison
of information on rural women’s time use in Burkina Faso
yielded by the recall technique and by direct observation
showed that about 44% of women’s work was unaccounted

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